Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1887-10-08

bargain he had struck, and how he had
outwitted the merchant. Proverbs, Xxx,
Ii: 1T Is naught, it is naught, saith
the buyer; but when he is gone his
way Their he boasteth." So utterly
askew is society in this matter that you
seldom find a seller asking the price
that he expects to get. He puts on a
higher value than he proposes to re-
ceive, knowing that ne will have to
drop. Ard if he wants fifty he asks
seventy-nve. And if he wants two
thousand he asks twenty-five hundred.
1T is naught," saith the buyer. ''The
faorio is defective; the style of goods
is poor; | can get elsewhere a better
article at a smaller price. 1t is out of
fashion; it is damaged; it will fade; it
will not wear we'll" After a while the
merchant from over-persuasion or from
desire to dispose of that particular
stock of goods, says: '.Well, take it
at your own price," and the purchaser
goes home with light step and calls in
to his private Office his confidential
friends, and chuckles while he tells how
that for half price he got the goods.
In other words, he lies and was proud
of 1t. Nothing would make times as
good, and the earning of a livelihood
so easy as the universal adoption of
LAW OF RIGHT
Suspicion strikes through all bargain
making. Men who sell know not
whether they will ever get the money.
Purchasers know not whether the
goods shipped will be according to the
sample. And what, with the large
number of clerks who are making false
entries and then abscond;ng to Canada,
and the experience of firms that fail
for millicrs of dollars, honest men are
at their wits end to make a living. He
who stands up amid all the pressure
and does right is accomplishing some
thing toward the establishment of a
high commercial prosperity. l have
deep sympathy for the laboring classes
who toll with hand and foot. But Se
must not forget the business men who
without any complaint or hammered
professions through the stI eet are en-
during a stress of circumstances ter
rifle. The fortunate people of to-day
are those who are receiving daily
wages on regular salaries. And the
men most to be pitied are those who
conduct a business while prices are
falling, and yet try to pay their clerks
and employees, and are in such fearful
straits that they would quit business to-
morrow il it were not for the wreck
and ruin of others. When people tell
me at what a ruinously low price they
purchased an article. it gives me more
dismay than satisfaction. | know it
means bankruptcy and defalcation of
men in many departments. The men
who toll with the brain need full rs
much sympathy as those who toll with
| the hand. All business life is struck
through with suspicion, and panics are
only the result Of want of confidence.
THE PRESSURE TO DO WRONG
ls all the stronger from the fact that in
our day the large business houses are
swallowing up the smaller, the whales
dining on blue fish and minrows. The
large houses undersell the small ones be-
cause they can afford it. They can afford
TO make nothing, or actually lose, on
some styles of goods, assured they can
make it up on others. So, a great dry
goods house goes outside of it's regular
line and sells books at cost or less than
cost, and that swamps the booksellers;
or, the dry-gcods house sells bric-a-brac
az lowest figures, that swamps the
small dealer in bric-a-brac. And the
same thing goes on IN other styles of
merchandise, and the consequence is
that all along the business streets of all
our cities there are merchants of small
capital who are in terrific struggle to
keep their heads above water. The
Cunarders run down the Newfoundland
fishing smacks. This is nothing against
the man who has the big store, for
every man has as large a store and as
great a business as he a manage. To
feel right and do right under all this
pressure requires martyr grace, re-
quires divine support, requires celes-
tial reinforcement. Yet there are tens
of thousands of such men getting
splendidly through. They see others
going up an themselves going down,
but they keep heir patience, and their
courage, and their
CHRISTIAN CONSISTENCY,
and after a while their turn of success
will come. The owners of the big bus
mess will die and their boys will get
possession of the business, and with a
cigar in their mouth, and full to the
chin with the best liquor, and behind a
pair of spanking bays they will pass
everything on the turnpike road to
temporal and eternal perdition. Then
the business will break up, and the
smaller dealers will have fair oppor-
tunity. Or the spirit Of contentment
and right feeling will take possession
of the large firm, as recently in the
case of the great house Of A. A. Low IL
Co., and the firm will say: 1--WE have
enough money for all our needs, and
the needs of our children; now let us
dissolve business and make wav for
other men in the same line" Instead
of being startled at a solitary instance
OF G~lagnanimity, as in the case just
! mentioned, it will become a common
thing. l know Of scores Of business
bonses that have had their opportunity
of vast accumulation, and who ought
A. d. g. Ill IL H.